While my post idea for Steins;Gate is bubbling, here’s Kamisama Dolls, or “What the flying hell are we watching this for now?” While not as bad or pointless as prior episodes, it didn’t seem to settle on what it wanted to be and just came off weaker for it.

In previous episodes, Kamisama Dolls was consistent. The tone almost never worked with the action and the comedy bits never failed to feel out of place, but you could discern whether it was trying to be serious and failing at it, or completely goofy and failing at it, both ways falling into a stagnant pool of mediocrity that was at least easy to determine. This episode screwed up that one positive trait so horribly that nothing of worth was recovered from the wreckage.

Once again, I was wrong about Mahiru not possibly playing a big enough part to warrant her introduction. However, the flashback that she launched was so ill-placed that it doesn’t even provide the illusion of progress for kamisama Dolls. It continues to linger on the status quo, moving at the speed of a forum role-play. That’s actually what this show puts me in the mindset of– a group of people so focused on developing their own characters that they don’t give the plot the attention it so desperately desires.

But hey, it’s time to get to the actual meat of the episode… what little there is, anyway. Basically, the entire plot of the episode is Mahiru getting pissed at Aki for suggesting that, heaven forbid, Kyouhei just doesn’t like her and isn’t willing to put up with her craziness more than necessary. What’s more, she assumes that Hibino is the cause of it, pulling Kyouhei to her with the sheer magnetic power of her improbably oversized breasts that should leave her in a back brace at this point. I can’t say she’s entirely wrong, but Mahiru is just a bit touched in the head for the audience to take that as anything but a threat on Hibino’s life. Naturally, hilarity then ensues. And by hilarity, I mean kidnapping.

Hell, Mahiru is just a total nutjob here. She not only assumes that the guy who’s shown no interest in her before is all over her, but acts possessive over him for defending her… which I think he also did to Aki, so she’s looking into things a bit more than she should. So while Hibino and the kakashi repairwoman go shopping, Mahiru hatches her diabolical plan to catch Hibino alone. Of course she’s indeed caught alone and pulled from her current location, before being tied to a bed and having her boobs massaged in what I assume is supposed to be a threatening and angry manner.

Oh the humanity!

Mahiru, instead of negotiating for the safe return of Hibino, just leaves her kidnapped while telling Kyouhei AGAIN that she loves him and thinks they should be together, all the while trampling on Utao’s cookies in what I assume is some kind of symbolic gesture as well as just a bitchy one. When he attempts to ease her out of her obsession with firm delicacy, she immediately throws a bitch fit and leaves in a huff, leaving Kyouhei and Utao to chase her and find Hibino. Finally, to finish up the episode, we see the man assigned to watch Hibino give her salacious looks and close the episode out on a note that implies attempted rape. I assume they were going to throw a laugh track in at the last minute, but were too lazy.

Among the (many) other problems of the episode, we have a tone that can’t help but waffle between serious implications and light comedy, often in the same scene. The most glaring example is when Mahiru kidnaps Hibino and assaults her boobs on the bed, shouting at her regarding Kyouhei with the goofiest face possible and an inappropriately wacky track playing loudly enough in the background to make one think that this would be supposed to be a comical moment, were it not for the implications.

It gets even more confusing when Mahiru confronts Kyouhei and Utao, trampling Utao’s cookies and eliciting the same goofy faced rage that Utao’s given damn near every other character in the series, regardless of circumstance. It all plays up to what could’ve been a serious plot being derailed for the sake of misplaced comedy, and what might’ve been intended as a comedy falling entirely flat due to the circumstances.

At this point in time, I have no idea where Kamisama Dolls is going. It has the opposite problem of Mawaru Penguindrum, which is chock full of so much content and so many misleading plot threads that it’s difficult to ascertain which are important. Kamisama Dolls, however, is in a constant state of inertia, despite illusions pointing to the contrary. Despite Mahiru shaking the foundation a bit, she still didn’t shake it enough to budge it into any kind of meaningful movement.

Long story short, it’s an entertaining enough plot, but it doesn’t have any idea whether it wants to be serious or not, and it just doesn’t lead anywhere that’ll make it memorable a year from now. Of course I could be proven wrong, and I’d welcome the chance to be, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I’m tired of writing this now, I’m going to start a review on something a little less embittering.

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I could not agree more with your post. I’m only powering through the last few episodes of this anime because I had hopes early on that it would go somewhere interesting… alas I was wrong, but now I have to finish what I started.